Events, Periods, and Institutions in Historians' Language Robert C. Stalnaker History and Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2. (1967), pp. 159-179. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2656%281967%296%3A2%3C159%3AEPAIIH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I History and Theory is currently published by Wesleyan University.
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EVENTS, PERIODS, AND INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORIANS'
LANGUAGE
ROBERT C. STALNAKER
Historians and meta-historians have sometimes been guilty of loose talk about the Weltgeist and of glib references to inflated forces and factors. One might infer from some quasi-historical writings that things like the Enlightenment, the German Character, the Bourgeoisie, the Spirit of Liberty, and Nationalism existed and acted independently of the actions of individual men. More toughminded historians and philosophers have objected to this kind of history, sometimes because it seemed to make unhappy metaphysical assumptions, sometimes because it was alleged to involve a denial of free will and to have offensive moral implications, and sometimes just because it was judged vague and sloppy historical writing. There is a temptation in the face of a too free use of certain kinds of expressions to generalize from abuses and lay down an abstract philosophical criterion with which to divide good history from bad. It has been argued, for example, by the defenders of a thesis - or rather a tangle of related theses which goes by the name of "methodological individualism" that terms which refer to individual men or concrete objects and properties or dispositions of men and objects can be distinguished from purported names and characteristics of such problematical things as events, periods, institutions, forces, factors, movements, nations, spirits, and social classes. Various restrictions on the use of terms of the latter kind have been proposed by the methodological individualists, including, in the strongest form of the thesis, the requirement that all names of so-called social wholes be given strict definitions in terms of expressions of the first category. The thesis, in several formulations, has generated a lively debate, but one carried on largely in the abstract. I shall argue in this paper that no general prohibition against the use of holistic terms can be justified, that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate uses of such terms is a problem for historians rather than for philosophers or methodologists - a problem that must be handled case by case. Further, I shall contend, the use of holistic terms does not, in general, have the pernicious metaphysical consequences alleged by some of the methodological individualists.
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But it is not clear what it means to assert the existence of some large historical unit, to ascribe a characteristic to it, or to attribute to it causal efficacy. There must be some criteria to judge these questions, and ways to distinguish useful and illuminating interpretative judgments from those that are vague or obscure. T o solve these problems we must ask how particular terms function in historical interpretation; the answer requires not a general methodological distinction, but a closer examination of the actual controversies in which historians engage. In this paper I shall first attempt to draw an analogy between the use of ordinary proper names and the use of certain abstract historical names ( I and 11); next, traversing ground familiar to historians, I shall discuss the concept of the Renaissance as an extended example of an historical problem in which a holistic concept has played a prominent part (111); and finally, I shall conclude with some general considerations concerning the existence of such things as events, periods, and institutions (IV).
I. PROPER NAMES
Before attacking the formidable problems concerning the function of interpretative judgments and the meaning of terms referring to large and possibly vaguely defined historical entities, let us look at a simpler hypothetical historical controversy. This we might call "the problem of Moses." Wittgenstein discusses it in an early section of the investigation^:^
.
If one says "Moses did not exist," this may mean various things. . . We may say, following Russell: the name "Moses" can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as "the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness," "the man who lived at that time and place and was then called 'Moses,' " "the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter" and so on. And according as we assume one definition or the other the proposition "Moses did not exist" acquires a different sense, and so does every other proposition about Moses.
If the issue in question is the existence or nonexistence of Moses, perhaps a sense for the name must be fixed, roughly at least, before the question can be answered. But suppose we are asking less ultimate questions: who was Moses? when did he live? was Moses really a Jew or an Egyptian? These are factual questions about a man referred to by the proper name "Moses." Are the questions ambiguous? If not, what is the sense of the name? "But when I make a statement about Moses," Wittgenstein continues, am I always ready to substitute some o n e of these descriptions for "Moses"? I shall perhaps say: By "Moses" I understand the man who did what the Bible 1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1953), part I, No. 79.
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relates of Moses, or at any rate a good deal of it. But how much? Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my proposition as false? Has the name Moses got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all possible cases? - Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from under me and vice versa?
We use proper names, it appears, without a fixed sense. We might argue the problem of Moses - the problem of who Moses was, when he lived and what he did - without ever selecting one definite description to be its sense. Does this indicate a lack of precision? "Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense? - Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)"2 Traditionally, genuine names, or logically proper names, were held to have no sense, or connotation, but only denotation. The meaning of a name is simply the object to which it refers. Russell argued that most terms that we normally call proper names are not genuine names in this sense. Three arguments have been used to support this claim. First, if ordinary proper names of persons were logically proper names, then a statement such as "Moses did not exist" would be nonsense; if the only meaning a name has is its referent, then we cannot use it intelligibly if it has none. But plainly, "Moses did not exist" is not nonsense, even if its sense is not perfectly clear. Second, if names have no sense, then all identity statements using names are either false or analytic. We cannot distinguish between the significance of "a = b" and "a = a" where "a" and "b" are names of the same thing. But an identity statement using two ordinary proper names can be informative about the world, as examples like "the Evening Star" and "the Morning Star" or "Cicero" and "Tully" show. Therefore, ordinary proper names cannot be genuine names.3 Third, logically proper names must be taught ostensively; the referent of a name must be known by acquaintance. Some ordinary proper names might be taught in this way, but historical figures, for example, can never be known except by description. There is, therefore, a logical dependence of the name on a description. Ordinary proper names of persons and things, then, must have a sense. The thesis of Russell that these arguments are used to defend is that ordinary proper names are disguised or abbreviated definite descriptions. Each name is identical in meaning with some individuating description of the person to whom the name refers. On this theory, it makes sense to deny the existence of the bearer of a name; different names of the same thing may be 2. Ibid. 3. This argument is Frege's.
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distinguished, and it is possible to explain how the name of something distant in time or place may be taught and significantly used. Wittgenstein draws out the consequences of this thesis in the sections quoted above. It follows from Russell's analysis that most names are grotesquely ambiguous, and that people usually use a name without knowing, or deciding, what it means. With most names as they are in fact used, however, there is no reason to believe that there is any one privileged individuating description of the individual. Two people can argue about the facts of a man's life without first setting aside some one identifying statement as the definition. Any statement of the form "Moses was the man who . . ." can be questioned, although perhaps not all of them at once. We would not, in most cases, say that this makes the argument vague, imprecise, or unsatisfactory. The consequences of Russell's theory of proper names seem to be contradicted by the facts about the way names are used. The argument against Russell's theory is a kind of open-question argument. What it claims to show is that proper names are irreducible or indefinable. This does not necessarily mean that they do not have sense; and no non-natural properties or special cognitive faculties need to be invoked to endow these irreducible terms with meaning, or to explain how it is possible to learn the use of a name. How does one explain the use, or identify the referent, of a name to one who has never heard it before? By giving identifying descriptions, by stating facts about the person to whom the name refers. There need not be two kinds of statements of the form "Leonard0 da Vinci was the man who . . one analytic and the other synthetic, in order that there be two uses of these statements: one to impart information about the man, the other to teach someone who the referent is. According to an analysis of proper names which tries to account for Wittgenstein's observations, a name is associated, in some way, with a set of descriptions - a loosely specified class of more or less well-accepted statements describing the person to whom the name purports to refer. Two people using a name can tell that they are talking about the same person if they find that they agree about a large part of a set of generally accepted facts about the person, or related to the person. How large a part is not specified and need not be. Some descriptive statements are more crucial than others, but there is no need to evaluate the relative weights. This area of agreement is not something that must be investigated before the discussion begins, but is something taken for granted. The background of factual assumptions provides an explanation of how it is possible to use a word, or a name, with no fixed sense without having the discussion suffer from lack of precision or failure of communication. Actually, this agreement would be better described as lack of disagreement. The fact that a dialogue proceeds without an excessive amount of puzzlement
."
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or dissent provides good grounds for assuming that the disputants are talking about the same thing. It is not only that it is normally unnecessary to fix a sense of a proper name; there is a positive value in allowing certain questions to remain open. John Searle writes: "The uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of proper names in our language lie precisely in the fact that they enable us to refer publicly to objects without being forced to raise issues and to come to agreement on what descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the ~ b j e c t . "No ~ effective precision is lost by this use of proper names, and a great deal in linguistic flexibility is gained. These observations may be used to support two quite different alternatives to Russell's analysis of proper names. The first is that names do have a sense, but an open-ended, indeterminate sense, which is given by the roughly specified set of description^.^ The second is that the traditional analysis of names is correct, and applies to ordinary proper names. The relation between the name and the relevant set of descriptions is held to be not a logical or meaning relation at all. But these two theses agree in rejecting Russell's reduction of names to definite descriptions, and the differences between them may be neglected for our purposes. My point is just to explain how it is possible to know by description the referent of a name when the name is not equivalent in meaning to any description; the association with a set of descriptions, however characterized, is sufficient to provide this explanation. It becomes useful and necessary to come to agreement more explicitly on descriptions which individuate the referent of the name only when so many facts are called into question that we lose confidence in the assumption that we know whom we are talking about. The function of proper names is to identify, or re-identify, something as the same thing. But, as many philosophers have pointed out, there is no clear sense to "the same" by itself or "the same thing." We can re-identify something as the same man, the same river, the same city, but not simply as the same. Therefore, in order that a name be used unambiguously, it must be clear about a proper name that it is the name of a man, a dog, a river, a mountain, or whatever. We need not be prepared to substitute an individuating description, as Russell's theory demands, but we must have an answer to the question, what kind of thing is the name a name These remarks about ordinary proper names are relevant to our problem in several ways. Names of events, periods, and institutions are like proper names of persons in some important ways, and if we can move beyond some 4. John Searle, "Proper Names," Mind 67 (1958), 172. 5. This is Searle's thesis. Cf. also Peter Geach, Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (London, 1957), section 16. 6. This argument is Geach's. Cf. Geach, section 16.
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dogmas about names of persons and things, we can perhaps move beyond some analogous dogmas about the historical terms. We shall also discuss some important differences between the two sorts of names.
11. SOCIAL WHOLES
Almost all historians -the tough-minded scientific breed as well as the ponderous German Geisteswissenschaftler -make extensive use of terms which have been called names of social wholes, or collective entities, or historical abstractions. Examples of such terms are "England," "the Lutheran Church," "the Holy Roman Empire," "the Great Depression," "the Black Death," "the Renaissance," "the guild system," "Deism." It would be stretching a point to call all of these proper names, but some clearly are, and all function as referring expressions. The distinction between a name and a definite description is not a sharp one, especially for things which are not officially endowed with a name at a determinate time, as are people and dogs and sometimes rivers and cities. Descriptions can become names just as names can become descriptions. What began as the description of a period as a time of renaissance des beaux arts became entrenched as a name of that period. It is intelligible to say that the Renaissance was a period of decline and decadence - some people do make such a claim. This would not be possible if the term were simply a description meaning "period of rebirth." This name continues to function as a general term in other contexts: historians talk about a Carolingian renaissance, a twelfthcentury renaissance, a literary renaissance in the South. "A renaissance," used in this way, means partly just "rebirth" or "revival" and partly "something like the Renaissance." To the extent that it is the latter, it is a case of a name becoming a description, just as "he is a Napoleon" means that he is like Napoleon in some way. The Holy Roman Empire, Voltaire said, was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, but the name does not lose its referent for this reason. Others of these terms are more closely tied to their descriptive content. We cannot discover that the Great Depression was a period of prosperity or that the time of the Black Death was characterized by general good health, and still maintain the names. These differences relate not only to the general descriptive content of the names, but also to the answer one would give in the different cases to the question, "what kind of thing is the name a name of?" It is this question - what kind of thing is the name a name of? -which causes trouble in most cases of historical abstractions and signals the great difference between ordinary proper names and the names of events, periods, institutions, forces, movements, spirits, and so forth. What kind of thing is
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AND INSTITUTIONS
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"Moses" a name of? A man. We do not know for sure when Moses was born, when he died, who his mother was, where he was at what times. But we do know that if there was such a man, then he was born at a determinate time, and died at a determinate date some time later. We do not Itnow where he traveled, but we know what it means to say that he was at some particular place at some particular time. We know that if he lived at all, Moses was a man, and we have a clear idea of what it is to be a man. What kind of thing is "the French Revolution" a name of? It is the name of a revolution, or an event, or a complex set of events. However we classify the French Revolution, it is clear that its boundaries in time and in space are indeterminate. It is not, as with Moses, that we do not know just when it was born and where it went, but we do not have a clear picture of what the beginning of an event must be like, or what it is for an event to be happening here, but not there. Barraclough's q ~ e s t i o n "what ,~ . . . was the western empire of the middle ages?" and his answer that one "cannot really speak of 'the medieval Empire' because there were a number of medieval empires" are different in kind from a question like "who was Socrates?" and an answer that "Socrates" was really two men. The concept of man and the criteria of identity for men are clear in a way that the concept of empire and their criteria of identity are not. A claim that Charlemagne9s empire and that of Otto H are not two stages in the development of the same empire, but are two different empires is not a straightforward factual thesis for this reason, even though it must be supported by facts. An ordinary proper name is indeterminate with respect to descriptions in the sense discussed in sec.iion 1 above: it is not equivalent in meaning to any individuating description. Names of periods, institutions, and events are indeterminate in a stronger sense as well: the criteria of identity for the kind of thing to which the name refers are fluid. "The American Civil War" is the name of an event. A lot of smaller events like the moving of armies, people dying, and governments issuing proclamations constitute this event; but an analysis of the meaning of "the American Civil War" would not show us what was happening in the relevant spatiotemporal region, or even very precisely what the relevant spatio-temporal region is; we must investigate the facts. Any, or almost any, purported fact about this war might be questioned or denied without linguistic oddity, but a background of factual agreement is presupposed when the name is used. This indefinite background of agreement explains in this case, as well as in the simpler case of ordinary proper names, how it is possible for the name to have a use. And just as "the uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of 7. Geoffrey Barraclough, History in n Clzn~zgirzgWorld (Norman, Oklahoma, 1956), 107.
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proper names in our language lie precisely in the fact that they enable us to refer publicly to objects without being forced to raise issues and to come to agreement on what descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the object," so the immense pragmatic value of names like "the American Civil War" lies in the fact that one can use such terms without committing oneself to a precise determination of what constitutes that event. No one disputes that the American Civil War actually took place. But much of what happened in the relevant spatio-temporal region is subject to heated controversy among historians. Exactly what the boundaries of this event are, and precisely what an event is in general seem quite beside the point unless some particular substantive issue turns on a determination of these questions. When such a question arises, the determination can be made. The background of commonly agreed upon facts about the event will provide the criteria for making it. I am trying to explain how it is possible for certain kinds of terms used by historians to be not strictly defined and yet not meaningless or useless; but we must draw some lines. I am not trying to justify any kind of abstract metaphysical history. All historical statements must relate to the facts, and all must be justified by the evidence. The following discussion of the historiography of the Renaissance is intended to throw some light on the way abstract names and interpretative judgments function in historical arguments. This problem is a good paradigm for our purpose, since it is a controversy in which the name, or the concept, has played a prominent role.
111. THE PROBLEM OF THE RENAISSANCE8
The history of the concept of the Renaissance and the history of the Renaissance itself find their origins at the same point in time; in fact, some historians have taken self-awareness or self-definition as a criterion of identity for the p e r i ~ dPetrarch, .~ as is well known, first spoke about "the Dark Age" as a time of barbarism and ignorance including the recent past and contrasting with the ancient world, and it is Petrarch who conceived the basic idea of a "revival under the influence of classical models."1° Giotto was recognized in his own 8. I do not intend in this essay to pass judgment on historical statements, or to make any contribution to the history of the period, but merely to display and analyze some patterns of argument that historians have used. For the background of the controversy I have relied on the standard works noted below. 9. E.g., Herbert Weisinger, "The Self-Awareness of the Renaissance as a Criterion of the Renaissance," Papers of tlze Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters 29 (1943). 10. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm, 1960), 10.
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time as one who "restored painting to its pristine dignity and great renown."ll The two themes in the early theory of revival were "back to the classics" and "back to nature."12 Vasari, who coined the phrase la rinascita dell'arte, brought them together in his interpretation of the recent history of Italian art. "For Vasari," wrote Huizinga, "the great restoration brought about by Cirnabue and Giotto was constituted in the direct imitation of nature. To him, a return to nature and a return to antiquity were almost identical. . . . Whoever followed the ancients rediscovered nature. This is a fundamental trait in the whole concept of the Renaissance in its own time."13 The French Enlightenment conception of a renaissance des lettres identified the revival of culture with the idea of progress and a return to reason. This theory did not easily fit together with the earlier Italian interpretation. The renaissance was located in the North rather than in Italy, and was thought to take place some time later. By some it was associated with the Reformation; others emphasized the secularization of society - the destruction of Christian superstition - as the essential feature of the period. The literary renaissance was conceived as the beginning of an indefinite improvement, while Vasari had thought that the flowering of art in his own time would be followed by a decline.14 The two theories shared, however, a particular contrast between the Middle Ages and the period of revival, and both invoked the idea of rebirth. The idea of the Middle Ages and Antiquity as periods came into being with the Renaissance, and with the concept of the Renaissance. This contrast, and the traditional three-fold periodization, ancient, medieval and modern, which goes with it, are the most essential and lasting components of the concept.15 The seventh volume of Michelet's history of France was subtitled La renaissance. Michelet drew heavily on ideas from the eighteenth century; for him, the Renaissance was the beginning of progress, the awakening from the Middle Ages. "Michelet lumped the Reformation and the Renaissance together as the happy dawn of the ideal of the Enlightenment."l"t began suddenly, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and was located primarily in 11. Filippo Villani writing in about 1400; quoted by Panofsky, 15. 12. Panofsky, 19. 13. Johan Huizinga, "The Problem of the Renaissance," in Huizinga, Men and Ideas (New York, 1959), 247. 14. Wallace K. Ferguson, T h e Renaissance in Historical Thouglzt: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), Chapters 111 and IV. 15. Ibid., 73 and Panofsky, 8. A convincing denial of the existence of identity of the Renaissance should be accompanied by an attack on the concept of the Middle Ages. Panofsky chides the "de-periodizers" for using a term whose meaning depends on the periodization they deny. Barraclough is on more solid ground, at least with regard to consistency, when in Chapter IV he attacks the reality of the Middle Ages, and redraws the periodizing lines in the ninth, thirteenth, and eighteenth centuries. 16. Huizinga, "Problem," 255.
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France. The twelfth to the fifteenth centuries were considered decadent times, not really part of the Middle Ages proper, but prior to the great awakening, "the discovery of the world, the discovery of man," which characterized the sixteenth century.17 It was this phrase of Michelet's -the discovery of the world and of man -which became identified with the Burckhardt thesis, a conception of the Renaissance which differed in time, place, and content from that of the French historian. Burckhardt in his famous work tried to locate and characterize a general change in attitude. In the Middle Ages. . . . Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation- only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the State and of all things in this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such.18
He supported this impressionistic claim, and at the same time gave it more specific content, by describing in detail some of the manifestations of this attitude in political behavior, in poetry, biography, chronicle, and art, in the revival of the study of antiquity, in social customs, and in ideas about morality and religion. During the centuries between the early humanists and the Swiss historian, the concept of the Renaissance had exhibited considerable variation: it had been used to denote a change in style of art and a rebirth of the human mind; it had been placed in fourteenth-century Italy and in sixteenth-century France; it had been called essentially Christian and essentially pagan, identified with the Reformation and contrasted with it. But in this process of continued revision and reformulation, the concept gathered around it a cluster of characteristics and associations, some very vague, others more precise; some very closely tied to the concept, others more easily given up. Any, or almost any, of the more or less well-entrenched claims about the Renaissance may be denied without destroying the concept, some more easily than others. The concept of the Renaissance is not irrevocably tied to a contrast with the naive eighteenth-century idea of the Middle Ages as a monolithic era of barbarism and darkness, but it is tied to some contrast with the earlier age. As the idea of the medieval period grows and changes, so changes the Renaissance. The Renaissance was traditionally identified with the rediscovery of and renewed interest in the ancient world. For some, this constituted the Renais17. Jules Michelet, Histoire de France au seiziZme siZcle: la renaissance [I8551 (Paris, 1898), 8. 18. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilizatiorl o f the Renaissance in Italy [I8601 (New York, 1958), 1, 143.
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sance; for Burckhardt, it was one of the manifestations of a change in attitude - a form which the Renaissance took. Burckhardt, it will be remembered, located the Renaissance in fourteenthand fifteenth-century Italy. It is not simply a fact about the Renaissance that it happened in this time and place, as it is a fact about Machiavelli that he was born in Italy in the fifteenth century, but neither is the Renaissance simply defined as that period of time in that place. Sometimes an old claim about the period may be maintained, but given a new interpretation. Burckhardt reaffirmed Michelet's statement that the Renaissance was the dual discovery of the world and of man, but placed this vague thesis in a different context and used different kinds of examples to support it. Certain very concrete things may become associated with the concept of the Renaissance: this painter, humanist, or petty tyrant may be a paradigm case of a Renaissance man. This action or custom may be taken to be particularly characteristic of the times. Sometimes these identifications are justified by a statement characterizing the period, but such outstanding examples may also be used to refute or reform a general thesis. Thus, if it is shown that on one characterization of the Renaissance St. Francis is more of a "Renaissance man" than Leon Battista Alberti, this might be a good reason to reject the general thesis. This is not a case of a theory being refuted by the facts: it is hardly a simple fact that someone or something is particularly characteristic of an age. The statements, more particular and more general, precise and vague, which are accepted must be reconciled with each other and with the evidence. There are no a priori rules which give priorities or make this procedure effective. Historical interpretation is more akin to theory construction than to observation or verification. With Burckhardt, the concept of the Renaissance was stabilized; his essay became the received opinion on the interpretation of this period. The story of the historiography of the Renaissance after Burckhardt is a story of extension and articulation of his thesis followed by attack on the theory, principally by medieval historians, followed by modification and revision. In the generation following the publication of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, specialized studies were carried out, applying Burckhardt's ideas to aspects of civilization which he had neglected. In the fields of history of formal philosophy, history of science, and economic history, scholars at first found nothing to challenge the general thesis and much to support it. Historians from different parts of Europe found their own renaissances in their own countries exhibiting the general features set down in Burckhardt's exposition, although with individual national differences. The Burckhardt thesis, however, could not be applied too broadly and indiscriminately without becoming so watered down as to be useless. Late in
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the nineteenth century, historians began pushing the origins of the Renaissance back in time, finding roots and precursors with increasing frequency in the Middle Ages. St. Francis of Assisi, according to his biographer Henry Thode, was the high point of a "movement which is the predisposing and driving force of modern civilization."19 Thode concluded that there was nothing new in fifteenth-century Italy: humanism and renaissance art were rooted in the forms and ideals of the preceding centuries.20 The emphasis was on continuity; the roots of the Renaissance and modern times were found, not in a reaction to the Middle Ages, but in its culmination. Charles Homer Haskins wrote about the twelfth-century rediscovery of the classical world. Lynn Thorndike pointed to the subtle discussions of individuality in the works of the medieval schoolmen, and imitations of nature with attention to minute detail in Gothic sculpture.21 All of the features emphasized by Burckhardt - individualism, renewed interest in the classics, discovery of nature, and realism -were now found in the period which was the crucial contrast to the Renaissance. "Burckhardt's thesis of individualism and the discovery of the world and man had now been carried to the extreme."22 Some of-these authors presented their medieval examples as counterexamples to the Burckhardt thesis, or to the viability of any conception of the Renaissance as a general period. Others sought merely to stretch the concept and extend the period back in time, or to emphasize continuity. In either case, the notion of the Renaissance could not survive these discoveries without extensive revision. That the Renaissance contrasts with the medieval world is one of the most firmly entrenched ideas associated with the concept. It is also closely tied to individualism, the discovery of nature, and the revival of classical learning. If the contrast breaks apart from all of these central characterizations, then there is little substance left to the idea of the Renaissance. If the origin of the modern world is found in the culmination of the Middle Ages, then the idea proves to be a mistake. "What had happened?" wrote Huizinga. The concept Renaissance, identified as it now was with individualism and a worldly spirit, had had to be stretched so far that it had completely lost its elasticity. It actually meant nothing any more. There was not a single major cultural phenomenon of the Middle Ages which did not fall under the concept Renaissance in at least one of its aspects.23 One response to these attacks is to say that there really was no Renaissance at all, or to emasculate the concept by giving it a neutral definition. Kristeller 19. Quoted by Ferguson, 300. 20. Ferguson, 302. 21. Lynn Thorndike, "Renaissance or Prenaissance?'Journal of the History of Ideas
4 (1943), 83-84.
22. Huizinga, "Problem," 264. 23. Zbid., 264-265.
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writes: "I shall . . . merely state that by 'the Renaissance' I understand that period of Western European history which extends approximately from 1300 to 1600, without any preconception as to the characteristics or merits of that period, or of those periods preceding and following it.'724This is a possible approach, though it is to be doubted whether Icristeller follows his policy consistently. At another point, when he asserts that there are "objective reasons for defending the existence and the importance of the R e n a i s s a n ~ e , "he ~ ~must be using a different conception, since the existence of three centuries is hardly in need of defense. Some historians have felt that the problem posed by the challenge to the Renaissance is one of continuity: was there a "sharp break" between the Middle Ages and the subsequent period? Was the quattrocento a period of more rapid change, or more profound change, than other periods?26 When the elements of innovation are weighed against the elements of tradition, does fifteenth-century Italy stand out from other periods?27Other historians, such as Kristeller and Panofsky, do not base their defense of the Renaissance as an identifiable period on a claim that there was any sharp break, or general increase in the rate of change of history, but merely on the assumption that the period had a "distinctive physiognomy" which is "no less definite, though no less difficult to describe in a satisfactory manner, than a human i n d i v i d ~ a l . " ~ ~ A defense of the Renaissance against the medieval counter-examples from either of these points of view depends on the use of a distinction between what is essential to the period, and what is accidental or superficial. There are no universal units in terms of which one can plot the rate of change of history in general; it is a truism that everywhere there is change, and everywhere continuity. But it is essential or profound change that is in question. Chabod, who poses the problem of the Renaissance in terms of continuity, asks how far the Italian Renaissance is "original in its basic nzotifs." He wants to distinguish what is "essentially new" from what is merely "a developing and broadening . . . of motifs of which there were already traces in . . . the European civilization of the Middle Ages.'729Durand, in attempting to weigh the originality of the science of the period, distinguishes two kinds of innovations: "internal elaboration of a traditional substance" and "a full intellectual mutation."30 24. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic Strains (New York, 1961), 3-4. 25. Ibid.., 93. 26. Cf. Kristeller, 4. 27. Dana Durand, "Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy," Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), 1-2. 28. Panofsky, 4; cf. Kristeller, 4. 29. Federico Chabod, Maclliavelli and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 162 [My italics]. 30. Durand, 2.
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The portrayal of tine physiognomy of a period presupposes that the period can be identified. It is not necessary, as Panofsky points out, to pinpoint the beginning and end, but the physiognomy will depend heavily on how the period is individuated, on what holds it together as one period, or on what is taken as the essence of the period. In fact, it seems that the claim that the period has a distinctive physiognomy is the same as the claim that it has an essence, or an identity. A question about the essence (in the Aristotelian sense) of Socrates is easy to answer, and is easily separated from a question about his individual features. Socrates is a man; his essence is humanity. With the Renaissance, however, the distinction between the general question and particular questions is not so sharp because the criteria of identity for periods are fluid. Still, for claims about the identity and general characteristics of a period to have any content at all, some distinction between differences in degree and differences in kind, or alterations of the same substance and change of substance must be drawn. These distinctions are questions of decision rather than discovery, pragmatic questions rather than simple questions of fact, but the decisions are not arbitrary or indifferent; there are reasonable and perverse ways to choose categories. The strategy of the historians who have defended the existence of the Renaissance as an identifiable period has been, not to deny the facts presented by the critics, but to deny the relevance of these facts to the general thesis that the identity of the Renaissance cannot be maintained. It is conceded that realism in art and historical writing, concern for individuality, and revivals of culture were all phenomena found in the medieval period as well as the Renaissance, but it is argued that there are essential differences between the ways in which these features manifested themselves. The defense involves a partial retreat from the Burckhardt thesis, more detailed articulation of the general characterization of the period, and careful explanation of the relevant senses of realism, individualism, and so forth. Panofsky analyzes several medieval cultural revivals, and argues that they are different from the Italian renaissance, "not only in scale but in structure." "The medieval renascences were limited and transitory; the Renaissance was total and ~ e r m a n e n t . "From ~ ~ the perspective of the Renaissance, classical civilization was "viewed as a coherent cultural system within which all things belonged together," as "a totality cut off from the present . . . an ideal to be longed for."" For the medieval man, however, Antiquity was "a storehouse of ideas and forms" from which were appropriated "such items as seemed to fit in with the thought of the immediate present."33 Chabod makes a similar point: "ancient Rome had indeed found favor in the eyes of medieval man, but only 31. Panofsky, 6. 32. Ibid., 111, 113. 33. Quoted by Panofsky, 111.
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in so far as it was compatible with, or rather 'served the interest of,' Christian Rome. Classical culture had survived merely as a subordinate element."34 These general distinctions are supported by richly detailed discussions of medieval images derived from classical models and classical allusions in literature. "When we use the term 'Renaissance' to describe a certain very definite phase of European history," writes Chabod, "we are referring to a mobilization of ideas, an artistic, literary and cultural 'period' which is first and foremost an 'intellectual' reality."35 "The Renaissance" denotes a change, not in behavior and institutions, but in attitude to behavior and institutions; in the way people describe and explain their actions rather than in the actions themselves. This distinction restricts the thesis that the Renaissance was a significant contrast with the Middle Ages and makes certain kinds of counter-examples irrelevant. It is beside the point, for example, that political interest was a dominant motivation for many people long before Machiavelli. What is to the point, Chabod argues, is that with Machiavelli there is for the first time a self-conscious tlzeory of politics as an autonomous interest. Realism - "the need and the skill to approximate the natural reality of things as closely as possible in word and image" - had been closely connected with the idea of Renaissance from the beginning, and was a significant theme of Burckhardt's c ~ n c e p t i o n The . ~ ~ examples of painstaking naturalism in Gothic sculpture and the concern for realistic detail manifested in the medieval chronicles of, for example, Froissart and Joinville, however, cast doubt on the idea that realistic portrayal is a distinguishing feature of the Renaissance. Huizinga argues that realism was an accompaniment of the Renaissance in its early development, but that it is not especially important in understanding "the very essence" of the period." It was not realism, but the self-consciousness of realism that distinguished the Renaissance: "From around 1400 on, artists and thinkers became more and more aware of realism in art as a problem and a task." "The essence of the Renaissance lies in the triumph over naive n a t u r a l i ~ m . "Panofsky finds in the fifteenth century a shift in emphasis ~~ from "the older postulate of verisimilitude" to a principle of "aesthetic selection" and a concern for harmony and proportion. "We see the function of painting, hitherto confined to a reproductive imitation of reality, extended to the rational organization of f ~ r m . " ~ W h a b ocontrasts d the realism of the medieval chroniclers with that of the historians of the later period: 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.
Chabod, 171-172. Ibid., 163. Huizinga, "Renaissance and Realism" in Huizinga, Meiz aild Ideas, 288. Ibid., 309. Ibid., 300, 303. Panofsky, 27.
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the realism of historians like Machiavelli and Guicciardini is a "conceptual" realism. It may even ignore the realism of particular detail, it may be less "photographic," precisely because the impressionistic clarity of an isolated detail is far less emphatic and important when it forms part of a picture completely dominated by a sense of human reality.40
The emphasis in these three analyses is on self-awareness and concern for total effect rather than on naive copying of detail. Again, the effect of these distinctions is to render some counter-examples irrelevant, and to explicate more precisely one of the essential characteristics of the period. The humanist movement was traditionally considered a distinctively Renaissance phenomenon, but the anti-Renaissance historians found "humanism" in the medieval period, and a strong scholastic movement during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. Renaissance humanism, they argued, made no significantly new contribution to philosophy, science, or scholarship. Kristeller answers the critics with a more careful definition of "humanism." It "was not as such a philosophical tendency or system, but rather a cultural and educational program which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies."41 Humanism was not a philosophy, but the study of the humanities, and it explicitly excluded all philosophical disciplines except morals. The humanists were students of grammar and rhetoric, "heirs and successors of the medieval rhetorician^."^^ There was a rivalry between the scholastic philosophers and the humanists, but it was, Kristeller argues, a rivalry between different disciplines rather than a battle between competing philosophical systems.43Kristeller's denial of the assumption that humanism was a philosophical system or method makes it easier to account for certain disconcerting facts, for example that Aristotelian philosophy was strong during the Renaissance period, or that the humanists made no direct contribution to philosophy or science, except for moral philosophy. His corrections of the received view reshuffle the issues by establishing some new categories for the study of the intellectual history of the period. In concluding this section, I should like to summarize three themes that I have tried to develop in this examination of the problem of the Renaissance. The first concerns the analogy that I am suggesting between the status of "the Renaissance" and that of ordinary proper names. The second concerns an important way in which the analogy breaks down. The third concerns the way that interpretative judgments using such names function, and the relation between more general and more particular historical statements. There is a large class of statements about the Renaissance, some of which 40. 41. 42. 43.
Chabod, 177. Kristeller, 10. Ibid., 98. Ibid., 102.
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are generally accepted, while others are matters of dispute; but any one of them may be called into question without overthrowing the concept. The same statement may be an historical claim about the Renaissance in one context, and an explanation of the use of the term in another. There are two functions of such statements, but not two kinds of statement - one whose job is to convey meaning, the other to state facts. The analogy between names of events, periods, and institutions and names of persons is not based on the claim that proper names have indeterminate sense, but on the claim that they do not have a determinate, specifiable sense -that is, that they are not equivalent in meaning to some definite description - and on the explanation of how it is possible in cases where the referent is known only by description for names to be both unambiguous and irreducible. Beyond this, the disanalogies may be more important. An ordinary proper name, it may be argued, refers very precisely to one individual person, even if our knowledge of who he may be is very hazy. It way be argued that there is no logical connection or meaning dependence of any kind between a name and the descriptions that are used to explain who the referent is, but only a pragmatic or epistemological dependence. But it would be more difficult to support these claims if they were made about names of events, periods, and institutions, precisely because of the indeterminate status of the general terms, "event," "period," and "institution." We cannot say, for example about the Renaissance, that the referent is fixed, even if we continue to disagree to some extent about what is true about this referent, or at least it would be misleading to make this claim because it seems to make a distinction for which we have no criteria. Sometimes, in fact, the answer to the question, "what kind of thing is 'the Renaissance' the name of?" may change, or be a matter of dispute. For Vasari the Renaissance was an event in the history of art. It developed into a period, but it has also been called movement, a spirit, an attitude, a style, and an experience. But these terms are so vague that a disagreement over this question, if justified at all, is not more central or crucial than others. In the case of names of things for which the criteria of identity are wellestablished, clear, and unproblematical, the question about the essence of the individual is settled prior to and independently of questions about the particular features of and facts about it, or him. The question about the essence is the question, what kind of thing is the name a name of? In the case of names of events, periods, and institutions, as well as other things, like actions, which have fluid criteria of identity, questions about essential or deep features are asked and answered together with a determination o f the particular elements which constitute or characterize the thing named. I have generalized very little about the criteria used to evaluate claims about essential or deep features of a period since this is a problem which requires historical rather than philosophical sophistication, and must be handled in the context of particular cases. I
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have tried instead to show that historians do make use of these distinctions, and to exhibit some of the arguments used by historians to support them. Because of the indeterminacy of the criteria of identity and the interconnection of questions about essences with those about individual features, judgments using names of such things as wars, eras, and empires have a different status and function from factual statements. The relation between interpretative judgments and the particulars used to support and illustrate them is different from the relation between statements of fact and their evidence, or between generalizations and their instantiations. The details which Burckhardt relates in his essay serve partly to support his impressionistic characterizations of the period, but partly to give them content, to exhibit what he means by "the Renaissance," and what it means, for example, "to become a spiritual individual." The judgment, "the Renaissance was the dual discovery of the world and of man" standing alone could belong either to Burckhardt or to Michelet. Which of two radically different theses it summarizes depends on the examples which are used to fill it out. The synoptic conclusions are not infinitely flexible, or empty, but they are not "detachable9' from the details which support them; they are dependent on the context for their meaning.** The interpretative judgments serve, on the other hand, partly as organizing principles for the description of the period. They provide criteria of relevance for the selection and emphasis of facts; they suggest counter-examples, and are made more precise in response to the challenge of counter-examples. In discussing the arguments of such historians as Huizinga, Chabod, Panofsky, and Kristeller, I have tried to exhibit this dialectic between more or less flexible interpretative judgments and more or less determinate factual claims, and to show that it is an important part of the historian's procedure.
IV.
INDETERMINACY AND EXISTENCE
The Renaissance was a period, a movement or a spirit which manifested itself in various forms primarily in Italy, to a lesser extent in Northern Europe, some time during the three centuries between 1300 and 1600. This sounds somewhat mysterious. Did it really exist, or is it only a pragmatic fiction? I cannot take the historian's question "did the Renaissance exist?" too seriously as something requiring a definitive answer, but I know in general what kinds of arguments are relevant to it: they are the sorts of considerations we have been discussing. But the evidence does not bear on the philosopher's question: he asks, do things like the Renaissance -events, periods, and institutions - really exist? 44. I owe this idea, and others, as well as the term "detachable conclusion" to Louis Mink; cf. "The Autonomy of Historical Understanding," History and Theory V (1966), 24-47.
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With such a question we return to the dispute over "methodological individualism." There are several ways in which this question, and its answer, may be interpreted. One may argue that all that is really happening in the relevant spatiotemporal region is a lot of individual actions and smaller events. There is nothing over and above these things that call be called "lthe Renaissance." A description of the period could be complete without using the term. Perhaps this is what the philosopher means when he says that the Renaissance, and similar alleged entities, do not exist. But complete description is an incoherent notion except as relative to some universe of individuals and set of predicates. Thus ontological questions must be settled before this criterion may be applied. The meaning of "over and above" here is not very clear. It does seem that the Renaissance is not something independent of or separate from smaller happenings, but this is a difficult notion to make precise. It is not always easy to distinguish different descriptions of the same state of affairs from descriptions of different states of affairs. This is because "state of affairs," like events, institutions, and periods, is not a determinate category. One may argue that to ask whether events, periods, and institutions exist is tantamount to asking whether the names, or other terms purporting to refer to such entities, are irreducible or inelimirzable. A term is reducible to a group of other terms, or eliminable in favor of them, if and only if any sentence containing it can be replaced by an "equivalent" sentence which contains only terms of the other group. By an "equivalent" sentence, I mean one which can fulfill all of the functions of the original sentence. This definition - perhaps we should call it a definition-sketch, since "to fulfill all of the functions" of a given sentence is not at all clear, in general - could be used as a criterion of existence: in this case, we would conclude from our investigation of the use of language by historians that events, periods, nations, spirits, institutions, and movements do exist, since expressions purporting to refer to such things have a unique function in the process of historical inquiry. It would be somewhat paradoxical, however, to use this pragmatic test to judge ontological questions. Such terms are irreducible because they are flexible, or indeterminate in certain respects; that is, the relation between terms like "the Enlightenment" or "the Peloponnesian War" and the descriptions of actions and smaller events which constitute the event or period, or through which the period or event is manifested is not something stipulated, or is not a logical or meaning relation. This flexibility is justified by the fact that we are uncertain about exactly what happened in the relevant periods of history. It is the uncertainty about what happened, the possibility of dispute about the facts, which makes the indeterminate status of concepts both necessary and useful. I n a state of imperfect knowledge, we want a language in which we can describe things on different levels of specificity, say exactly as much as we know. In a context of dispute,
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we want a language in which we can state what is accepted by both parties so as to frame better what is in question. If there were no possibility of debate about questions that are clearly questions of fact, then there would be no need for flexible categories. If all "the facts" were in, then we could arbitrarily identify the meaning of the term "Renaissance" with a set of descriptions of individual actions and events. Exactly how we fixed the meaning would make no difference for what could be said. The answer to the question about whether or not some part of languagein particular some category of referring expressions - has a positive function is dependent, not only on how the world is, on what exists, but also on the state of knowledge. To make existence dependent on the irreducibility of a category of terms is to make existence dependent on the present state of knowledge. A denial of existence may, however, be completely separated from any claim or recommendation concerning reducibility. Some writers have admitted that holistic terms are not strictly definable, and that their use is legitimate, but have counseled that they be used only in a nominalistic spirit. Henri-Irknke Marrou writes : Here it is a question of singular terms, not susceptible to an exhaustive definition, denoting a complex, for example a more or less vast period in the history of some particular human sphere, in the history of art, or of thought, etc., that is to say, the totality of that which we come to know of the object thus defined. The use of such notions is perfectly legitimate, at least if one is careful to preserve their strictly nominalistic character: the word is only a verbal symbol of a reality whose structure, more or less organic, more or less anarchic, one should not prejudge.45
What exactly is the force of a nominalistic position with respect to a term not susceptible to an exhaustive definition? How do we act differently in using the term? An ontological puritan might accuse Marrou of trying to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to use language which presupposes an extravagant ontology while paying lip service to an austere ideal. But we see the abuse which Marrou wishes to warn against: it is a hardening of the categories. The issue between nominalists and realists is often not about which undefined terms we shall be allowed to use, but about how inflexible their use should be. T o what extent do we consider answers to questions about them to be dictated by the facts and to what extent by pragmatic decisions? How much will our categories, periodizations, classifications, individuations stretch; and how easily will we give them up? The question of existence is perhaps a misleading concept under which to group these differences; these are questions of nuance and degree while existence seems a black and white thing. But while there are not degrees of existence there are degrees of existential commitment and different kinds of 45. Henri-IrCnBe Marrou, De la connaissance historique (Paris, 1954), 166.
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reservations about it. Marrou is simply warning against overlooking these differences. What is illegitimate, and sometimes pernicious, are dummy terms which have infinite flexibility; they have no descriptive content or reference, are useless, even in heuristic rules, and function only in pseudo-explanations. But whether or not a particular term is illegitimate in this way is a question to be judged in individual cases. It is a relevant consideration for the historian when he evaluates a particular interpretative thesis. As soon as it is recognized that the existence of some alleged holistic entity cannot be judged by a general and effective methodological principle, the distinction between the historian's and the philosopher's question breaks down, and it is left to the historians to judge, in light of the evidence, whether or not "Renaissance" is a meaningful or useful term, and in what sense there was or was not a Renaissance.
Yale University
